


XIV. Rooms

by notablyindigo



Series: The Better Half [14]
Category: Elementary
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notablyindigo/pseuds/notablyindigo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Offer me religion if it talks of a soul<br/>And how a miracle will take you to that window in the wall<br/>And the window in the star</p>
    </blockquote>





	XIV. Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> Offer me religion if it talks of a soul  
> And how a miracle will take you to that window in the wall  
> And the window in the star

Joan finds it a strange thing, being back in the brownstone. After all that's changed, after all she's seen, there's the crumb-strewn plate she'd had her morning toast on two days ago still sitting, untouched, on the dining table. Her bedclothes are precisely as rumpled as she'd left them. Her house slippers still rest in front of the armchair in the living room, where she'd shuffled them off so that she could tuck her feet under herself as she sat working. She hadn't been gone long enough for things to have moved, to look different, and yet everything looks different to her now. 

She lays in bed listening to the rumble of voices from downstairs--she can make out Sherlock's tense tenor most distinctly--and wonders if she should have taken up that doctor on his offer of a sleep aid after all. The clock next to her bed reads 3:47AM and she can't fathom ever again having enough energy to move from this spot, but she's too keyed up to so much as close her eyes. By her count, she's seen six men killed in the last twelve hours, and with each blink she sees their faces projected on the insides of her eyelids. When she'd put down her scalpel for good, she'd thought she was giving up such immediate influence over the lives and deaths of others. She'd counted on it. And yet. 

The front door opens and shuts, and then there's silence downstairs. Joan considers getting up, feels the usual compulsion to go and pick up the pieces she knows Sherlock must be in by now, but her head is like a weight, like an anchor pulling her down into the pillow. She knows this kind of paradoxical exhaustion well, remembers it from all-night shifts and bedside vigils and, of course, the days and weeks after Mr. Castoro's death. But her sleepless reflections have always been upon the life of another--of a patient, of a client. This, she knows, is different. This will take longer to sort. 

There is a creak in the floorboards on the landing outside of her door and she stiffens for a moment, heart suddenly hammering against her ribcage, before she remembers Sherlock and his penchant for skulking. She coughs once, loudly, for his benefit. The footsteps recede back down the stairs, and she lays there, listening to her blood pound in her ears. 

3:49AM, the clock says. It's going to be a long night.

\-----  
   
She drops the pretense of sleeping after the first full day without it. If Sherlock notices that she's worn the same dress two days in a row--and she knows he does--he doesn't mention it. There's a case afoot, and his brother's presence is distracting Sherlock (she can almost see on his face the concentration he expends coming up with barbs and insults to throw Mycroft's way). If she's being honest, Mycroft being there is throwing her off, too. She's angry, knows she has every right, but feels like she ought not to be. He has a crumpled look about him these days and doesn't look like he's been sleeping. But then, what does she know? What does she really know about him at all?

She does her best, tries to focus, but she's not like Sherlock. She can feel the lack of sleep compromising her focus, the edges of her vision blurring intermittently as her conscious mind tries and tries again to shut itself off. But again there's that throb of her heart, leaping in her chest like a trapped animal every time she comes close to falling asleep. In medical school she'd learned about hypnic jerks, the involuntary twitching of muscles that often shakes one from the verge of sleep. She'd been told once that it was the body's way of checking to make sure that you haven't died, and Joan finds herself seeking more ways to affirm that she hadn't in fact perished in that warehouse. She slices herself on the leg (mostly by accident) while shaving. I live, I live, I live, she thinks as she watches red-tinged bathwater swirl down the drain.

It takes Sherlock a full day to acknowledge that he knows something is wrong, and when he finally brings it up, Joan finds that she can't talk about it. Every part of her feels hyperextended, stretched out and vulnerable like a too-tight violin string. She thinks that if he tries to play her right now, if he asks her to open and tell and give, that she might break beyond repair--something neither of them can afford. She shuts it off. She works. 

Or, at least, she tries to. 

A day later, they've finally made progress in the case, the missing arms of Arthur West finally turning up at least in photographic form, and Sherlock decides that sleep is a just reward. He disappears into his room as soon as they return to the brownstone, and silence descends almost at once. Joan sets up at the dining table, the pictures of Adam West's invisible tattoos spread out in front of her, and tries to make sense of what she's seeing, but the numbers begin to swim around on the paper again and Joan puts them away. Maybe she should try to sleep again? But the very thought provokes a nauseating surge of anxiety. She thinks about the emptiness of her bedroom, the vast unoccupied space, and decides firmly against it. She stands in the middle of the kitchen, looking nervously around. Her eyes pause on the lock and chain on the front door--both secured--and then on the electric kettle by the sink. Tea. Of course.

She fills the kettle and sets it to boil before sitting back down at the table. Through the windows and from between the lattice of other buildings, she can see slivers of the city lights, glittering even now at half-past-two in the morning as brightly as they were at eight. The city, at least, is keeping her company in her sleeplessness. 

It's a strange thing, being this tired and yet unable, unwilling, to close her eyes. She'd been held for two days and one night and had been too anxious to sleep, wound tight with fear for her unexpected gunshot patient as much as for herself. The men from Le Milieu had left James spread out on the table after his impromptu surgery, pausing long enough to throw a blanket over his prone body. Joan had been the only one to stay at his side to observe him throughout the night, intermittently checking his vitals as best she could. Staying awake to monitor him hadn't been hard--one night without sleep wasn't a tall order for Joan, hadn't been since medical school--and the adrenaline had certainly helped. She'd gone over her procedure in her head again and again, checking and re-checking for potential mistakes, and that itself was enough to keep her alert. But it had been two days since then, a total of three days without rest, and her exhaustion was beginning to lay a curious and somewhat disturbing film over everything. She can't tell anymore if what she's seeing, what she's feeling, is the truth. 

The shrill sound of the kettle's whistle breaks the silence. Joan startles badly, leaping up out of her chair so quickly that she knocks it over. She claps a hand over her mouth, holding back a yell, but the chair bangs loudly against the floor as it falls. Her heart is jackhammering in her chest, all the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. With shaking hands, she unplugs the kettle, which gives a last breathy gasp before quieting. 

It shouldn't have frightened her so much--it's just a tea kettle, and she'd plugged the damn thing in herself--but no amount of rationalizing helps. In her mind, the kettle's whistle becomes gunshots, conjuring images of bodies jerked backwards by the force of bullet impacts. She feels exposed, overwhelmed by the vastness of the space around her. Joan wraps her arms around herself before pressing tightly into the corner formed by the kitchen counter and the wall. 

It is in this position that Sherlock finds her moments later when he bursts out of his bedroom, eyes foggy with sleep. 

"Watson, are you alright? I thought I heard--" His eyes scan the room, registering the overturned chair and the still-steaming kettle, before locating her in the corner. 

"Watson," Sherlock says again, with a softness that doesn't quite become him. He approaches her slowly, palms turned toward. "It's alright, Watson, nothing's happened." He pauses, then adds, "You're safe." He can see her struggling to put herself together, can see that she doesn't have the energy to finish the job. She takes a ragged breath in through the nose, exhaling slowly from between clenched teeth. 

"I'm fine," she says, but she sounds unconvinced. Sherlock rights the toppled chair and steers Joan to it. 

"Sit," he says, and busies himself preparing cups of tea for the both of them. 

Sherlock himself is willing to admit that he's never been the most...emotionally-perceptive person. For all his talents and powers of observations, he finds that the subtleties of others' feelings often escape his notice. Even so, even with his back to her, he can feel the fear and anxiety rolling off of Joan in waves. He adds an extra chamomile sachet to her mug before stirring in the precise amount of honey he knows she takes with her tea. In this, at least, he can get things just right.

He sets the mug down in front of her before taking a seat opposite her at the table. Joan takes a long sip, humming appreciatively, and Sherlock wonders at how she hasn't scalded her tongue. He allows a long moment of quiet to stretch between them before clearing his throat.  

"Your insomnia since returning has not escaped my attention," he announces quietly, meeting Joan's eyes from over his own mug. When she doesn't reply, he continues. "At first I thought perhaps the adrenaline from your rescue was keeping you from sleeping but clearly...well, it's clearly more than that." He drums his fingers on the back of his other hand. 

Joan swallows hard. She's not ready to talk about it, doesn't know how to make words that would adequately communicate all she's thought and felt over the last few days, and is too tired to try. She holds her head in her hands, elbows braced on the tabletop, and sighs. 

"You don't have to say anything you're not prepared to say. I'm not asking for you to--" Sherlock pauses, starts again. "We can talk about it when you're ready, if you want. But I think you would benefit from some rest, at the very least. I'd like to help if I can." Joan regards him carefully, then looks down at the tea and back up at him. 

"I've already been chloroformed once this week," she says, a warning tone creeping into her voice. Sherlock makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. 

"Watson, I'm not going to drug you," he scoffs. "I was going to suggest sympathetic nervous system compression. Very effective, substance-free means of calming the nerves." Joan lifts an eyebrow.

"You want to Temple Grandin me?" she asks skeptically, thinking of the documentary on cattle farming she'd seen once, which had described the squeezing chutes Grandin had invented to help calm cows prior to slaughter. Sherlock rolls his eyes. 

"Deep pressure from compression can be very soothing, especially when one is feeling overstimulated, as I suspect you are," he says, and as he explains, his voice begins to return to normal from the gentle hushed tone he's been using. "I myself often use a smallish straightjacket to simulate--" 

"I am not wearing a straightjacket," Joan says, working hard to suppress the shivers that have already started in her hands. Even the mention of it resurrects memories of waking up bound hand and foot, unable to move at all. The thought makes her skin crawl, makes the pit in her stomach open its mouth wider. 

Joan gets up from the table, careful not to knock her chair over this time. "I'm just going to go lie down," she says, pulse racing and head throbbing with exhaustion. "Rest my eyes a little or something. I'll see you in the morning." She pauses at the foot of the stairs. "Thanks for the tea." 

\-----

Joan's lying in bed, eyes tracing the patterns in the wood of the exposed beams on the ceiling, when there's a soft knock at the door. She glances towards the sound and hesitates a moment before calling for Sherlock to come in. He pushes the door open tentatively. 

"Alright, Watson?" he asks, shutting the door behind him, and she nods. "I, ah....I apologize for earlier," he says, coming to stand by  the bed. "I didn't mean to suggest...but I should've thought about how it would sound to you..." He hesitates a moment, then sits down on the edge of the mattress. Joan bites back her surprise and says nothing, waiting. 

"At any rate, what I'd meant to say earlier is that there are other methods of nervous system compression that I thought you might be amenable to trying." Joan regards him for a moment, then nods. 

"What did you have in mind?" she asks, starting to sit up, but Sherlock stops her.

"If you shift like this, I'll just--"  Before she knows it, Joan is on her side with Sherlock behind her, arms tight around her and pressing her into his chest. She lies still and lets the shock wash over her--she can count on perhaps one hand the number of times she and Sherlock have touched more than incidentally--before smiling a bit to herself and settling more comfortably against him. 

"Deep pressure compression," Sherlock says in the voice he typically reserves for explaining deductions, "stimulates the release of dopamine and oxytocin, which relaxes the sympathetic nervous system, decreases cortisol secretion, and lowers blood pressure. As a result, one feels calmer, more at ease." He pauses, gauging her response. "Is this alright? Helpful at all?" he asks, and Joan is somewhat surprised to find that it is. True to Sherlock's description, she can feel her heart rate slowing, her body relaxing. 

"Yeah," she says. "Feels nice." It also feels vulnerable, but less vulnerable than words. And it's been an eternity since she's let herself be held like this. 

"I'll stay as long as you wish. Or I can go..." He trails off. 

"No," Joan says, her hands tightening reflexively on his forearms. "Stay." She reaches over and turns out the light, and there's more shifting, more settling of their bodies against each other. 

"Y'know," Joan says in the dark, unable to keep the teasing tone out of her voice, "most people just call this spooning." Sherlock snorts derisively. 

"Most people, then, would be wrong. This is simply a means of helping you sleep. If we're to solve the Arthur West case, I need you at your best, after all." 

Joan nods, and finally shuts her eyes.


End file.
